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EVER SINCE me and my wife began talking about raising kids, I've occasionally found myself daydreaming about a particular kind of scenario.
There are a couple of different ways this scenario plays out in my head, but the gist of it is that I’m subtly letting our kids overhear me saying they are smart.
In one version, I hear our kid coming downstairs to the kitchen where we're cooking and I say to my wife, just loud enough to be overheard: "It's wonderful that Wren is so smart."
In another version, I'm telling Wren directly that her teachers have told us that she is very smart.
The reason I daydream about Wren overhearing us and her teachers praise her intelligence is that stuff said about you in your absence often feels truer than stuff said to your face—and I want Wren to really believe, beyond all doubt, that she is smart.
I want Wren to believe she is smart because I think that believing you are smart is a prerequisite for being smart, and for enjoying learning, and realising your full potential.
So, you can imagine my shock to discover that telling Wren she is smart, indirectly or otherwise, could have the exact opposite effect on her.
To explain why, I need to tell you about the work of psychologists Carol Dweck and Ellen Leggett.
In 1988, Dweck & Leggett published a paper called A Social-Cognitive Approach to Motivation and Personality in which they showed that when faced with difficult intellectual challenges (maths and science problems), kids of the same age and ability responded in one of two ways; they either:
spat out their proverbial dummies, becoming self-critical ("I'm not smart enough" "My memory sucks") and performing poorly or giving up altogether—or they
relished the challenge ("You know, I was hoping this would be informative!"), employing a variety of strategies and trying out different solutions till the end
How could kids of similar ability react so differently to the same situation?
The answer, Dweck & Leggett learned, was that the two groups were intrinsically motivated by two different goals.
The struggling group were ultimately driven by the goal of proving their competence, or at least hiding their incompetence. The way this manifested included getting pissed when their attempts to solve the problems failed, growing bored and dismissive of the challenge, and attempting to bolster their reputation by citing their other (unrelated) skills and achievements.
By contrast, the successful group were ultimately driven by the goal of developing their competence, manifesting as self-encouragement and self-regulation ("I've done this before, I can do it again!"). Their attention was entirely focused on the problem at hand rather than their reputation. And they persevered in high spirits despite not solving the problems.
In short, a kid was intrinsically motivated either to perform, or to learn, and this set up the framework in which they perceived and reacted to difficulty.
Of course, the next question was: Well, what accounts for those goals?
Through further studies, Dweck & Leggett found it was kids’ respective beliefs about intelligence that determined their intrinsic goal.
The performance-driven kids believed that intelligence was a fixed entity, something we are born with that cannot be developed further.
While the learning-driven kids believed that intelligence is developed incrementally.
If you believed that your intelligence was fixed, then it makes sense that your main concerns would be proving how much intelligence you have, doing whatever you could to protect it, and avoiding doing anything that may reveal your incompetence.
If, on the other hand, you believed your intelligence grew incrementally, then your main concerns would be learning and improving. You’d be comfortable being perceived as incompetent (at least for a time) as you’d know that learning necessitated being ignorant and wrong.
When faced with challenges, then, our prior beliefs about intelligence shape our goals, and our goals shape our responses (thoughts, feelings, behaviours), ultimately making us more, or less, adaptive.
Beliefs → Goals → Responses
Dweck & Leggett aptly named these two mindsets the "Entity" mindset and the "Incremental" mindset.
Dweck went on to publish a popular book, Mindset, making these findings accessible to a wider public using the terms "fixed” vs. “growth” mindset, which you've likely come across.
When reflecting on all this, I had trouble imagining what could cause a child to believe that intelligence is fixed. It seems to me so self-evident that it is anything but.
And here's where I got my shock.
One surefire way to instil the fixed entity mindset is to tell kids they are smart. This is because "You're so smart!" signals that their intelligence is innate and unchangeable. (It goes without saying that you send the same signal if you tell kids they are dumb.)
Alternatively, to encourage a growth mindset, we should give not person-praise, but process-praise—"You worked really hard on that!" "I love that you tried something new!" "Look how much clearer your writing is than last week!"—as this helps to instil the idea that intelligence is a flowering process.
There is another way in which a certain type of praise-giving can backfire. It comes from a different set of ideas in a different book, but it connects well here so I'll quickly mention it.
Michaeleen Doucleff is a US-based journalist who decided to study non-western parenting styles after becoming overwhelmed by western-centric advice. Her research became a bestselling book, Hunt Gather Parent, which showed, among other things, that even the most well-meaning praise often contains its sinister cousin: criticism.
"Wow, you did it right!' → Implies they usually do it wrong
"I love how neat that is." → Implies inconsistency is a flaw
"See? You can do it when you try." → Implies they don't normally try
"You're really good at this!" → Implies there are limits on what they're "good at"
"See? That wasn't so hard, was it?" → Implies they overreact to challenges
"Good boy/girl!" (after a task) → Reduces achievement to obedience or identity
I am aware that there is an element of deceit in my daydream, and yeah, it has always bothered me. As much as I do want our kids—all kids—to believe they are smart, I also don't want to behave sneakily, saying things performatively in their earshot.
Much better to be sincere and direct. And thanks to Dweck, Leggett, Doucleff and others, I'm starting to get a better grasp of the art and science of praise.
More importantly, in writing this essay, I have realised that my daydreams were founded on the fixed mindset all along. For why would I need to tell anybody they were smart in a world where intelligence is flourishing?
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When you can only learn new things using things you've already learned
If someone asks you why the sky is blue, instead of attempting an answer, or saying “I don’t know,” try asking them why THEY think it’s blue. Their answer will tell you how best to help them learn.
Love the framing. Was listening to a podcast (can't say which :/) talking about how compliments during feedback sessions are given vs should be given
Saying good job isnt enough. Giving context to why and how its a good job is more useful because:
1. The person will believe you if it is more specific
2. Its more useful for them because they can see what to repeat
This piece just gives more research backbone on what was shared above